The invasion of Ukraine, combined with the black currency market, has dropped the Zimbabwean dollar, weighing a little more the economy of this country which has suffered for twenty years from shortages of silver and Food.
Le Monde with AFP
Emina Chishangwe no longer knows when she ate meat for the last time. “It has become a luxury,” said this 57 -year -old woman who holds a small stall of vegetables near Harare. Hyperinflation attacks income in Zimbabwe, a country where the inflation rate is the highest in the world. And for Steve Hanke, professor of economics at the American University Johns-Hopkins, this can only be corrected by the total adoption of the US dollar.
The situation has worsened this year. The invasion of Ukraine by Russia, combined with the black currency market, has dropped the value of the Zimbabwean dollar. “The parallel market is largely responsible for rampant inflation,” Joseph Mverecha, chief economist of Agribank, told AFP. The country’s economy has been sealed for twenty years, marked by shortages of money and food. People, people have swapped their liquid against US dollars, further falling the local currency.
Inflation reached 191.6 % in June, compared to 60 % at the start of the year. Five kilos of chicken pests are now worth $ 65.22 (64 euros), the equivalent of the average monthly salary of an official. Emina Chishangwe and his two adult sons, who live in Chitungwiza, a poor dormitory city south of the capital, make two daily meals instead of three, based on thick porridge of corn and kiss or tiny dried sardines.
The price of fuel forced Edwin Matsvai to go from a 4×4 to a more economical model. His friends have laughed, “but now some are planning to do the same,” said this seller at a dealership. The liter of gasoline went from $ 1.41 in January to 1.77 dollars this month.
“Anxiety disorders and alcohol abuse”
The Zimbabweans survived the worst difficulties in 2008 when, faced with inflation, the Central Bank had to issue a mille -billion local dollars. For the psychiatrist Isabel Chinoperekwei, who has a private cabinet in Harare, the growing gap between income and cost of living has repercussions: “I see a lot of people that this context overwhelmed, between depression, anxiety disorders and alcohol alcohol . “
Many accuse the government. “The old people dropped us,” says Edwin Matsvai: “If they don’t do something quickly for the economy, it will cost them dearly” in the elections scheduled for next year. Already, during partial legislative elections in March, the Zanu-PF, in power, lost ground in the face of the coalition of citizens for change (CCC), opposition party formed three months earlier.
According to several experts, the current landscape is furiously similar to the crisis preceding the 2008 elections, during which the ex-leader Robert Mugabe almost lost power. “People who earn wages of misery, the unemployed and all those who feel the effects of the cost of living have lost confidence in the Zanu-PF,” said Takavafira Zhou, political scientist at the University of Masvingo. They hope “a new government that would allow them to blow”.
The Zanu-PF has been in power since 1980, when the British colonial regime has ended. The current president, Emmerson Mnangagwa, succeeded Mugabe during a coup in 2017, committing to straighten the Moribonde economy. The electoral risk is now pushing the Zanu-PF to “frantic measures” to slow down the increase in prices that even paid millions of people, says economist Prosper Chitambara. “There is not a ruling party in the world that is doing in a high chronic inflation environment,” notes the researcher.
Last month, the Minister of Finance, Mthuli Ncube, announced monetary measures, in particular the maintenance of the double use of the US dollar, adopted after hyperinflation of 2008, and the Zimbabwean dollar, reintroduced in 2019. minimum interest more than doubled to reach 200 % last week. The country also introduces gold coins “as a value reserve” from July 25. But these measures concern the rich, not “ordinary citizens, those who fight and live day by day”, notes the economist.